72 hours in the Pink City
Learning to see beyond monuments and milestones at Anantara Jewel Bagh, Jaipur
Note: This stay at Anantara Jewel Bagh, Jaipur, was hosted. As always, all observations, photographs, and reflections are my own.
Padharo mhare desh goes the famous Rajasthani folk song, a refrain that has come to define the region’s instinctive warmth. Welcome to my land.
In Jaipur, that sentiment is brought literally to life, rendered in pink sandstone and performed in the daily choreography of the streets. From the first glimpse of those rose and terracotta walls, the city heaves with colour and contradiction: camels beside motorbikes, cows sidestepping rickshaws, marigold garlands swaying in narrow lanes where shopkeepers call out over one another in that particular blend of Hindi, English, and Rajasthani that marks commercial exchange in this part of India. It remains a city like no other, performing itself with the practiced ease of a classical dancer, at once regal yet restless, choreographed yet spontaneous, bound by ancient principles yet constantly spilling over its own careful boundaries.
Founded in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, who had earned his title meaning “one and a quarter times superior” from the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb himself, Jaipur was India’s first great planned city, an audacious experiment in turning geometry into geography. The young ruler, who had ascended to the throne at eleven, eventually broke free from Mughal dominance and made the bold decision to relocate his capital from the traditional hill fort of Amber to this new city built on the plains, designed not as a fortress but as a commercial nexus that could rival Delhi and Agra. Its wide streets and symmetrical facades still hold the logic of Vastu Shastra and Shilpa Shastra, those ancient architectural principles that governed not just the placement of buildings but the flow of energy through space, even as daily life now spills enthusiastically over every boundary the maharaja so carefully drew. To walk through the old city is to feel both order and chaos existing in perfect proportion, to sense a ruler’s obsession with balance being lovingly, continuously undone by the simple passage of time and the persistence of human need.
I had seventy-two hours here, and like every traveller who foolishly believes that time might bend to accommodate an ambitious itinerary, I had filled my diary with far more plans than any reasonable person could execute. There were palaces to explore, markets to navigate, craftsmen to meet in those side streets where the real business of the city continues as it has for centuries, and somewhere along the way, I had promised myself a proper rest at Anantara Jewel Bagh, Jaipur’s newest and perhaps most ambitious palace hotel, positioned thoughtfully on the city’s edge where the urban chaos begins to give way to something quieter.
The hotel itself is a curious achievement, a modern construction that somehow feels centuries old, built as a love letter to Rajputana architecture from yellow Jaisalmer stone and Banswara marble, its surfaces carved with jaalis that scatter light like the finest lace thrown across a morning window. Its façade, dense with jharokas, jaali, and intricate carvings, deliberately echoes Amber Fort, catching that same extraordinary hue when the late afternoon sun angles across its sandstone surface. A staff member would later confide that this resemblance was entirely intentional, conceived as a way of bringing the fort’s distant grandeur closer for those guests who might never make the actual climb up those ancient ramparts.
That first afternoon, my mother — whom I had brought along with me — and I joined one of the hotel’s Spice Spoons experiences, an Anantara signature that had been carefully refashioned here as an authentic Rajasthani kitchen encounter. In the sun-dappled courtyard, where the light filtered through carefully carved windows, the chef taught us the art of making Gulab ki Kheer, that rose-scented rice pudding that appears at every celebration worth remembering. We stirred and laughed and negotiated, in that familiar desi mother–son way, over sugar ratios, cholesterol, and my anxious calculations about what this would mean for her diabetes, conducting the sort of playful argument that has played out in Indian kitchens for generations. It was one of those unhurried moments that cities like Jaipur, with their perpetual motion and commercial energy, rarely make room for, and it reminded me that hospitality can sometimes mean nothing more complicated than being allowed to stop for a while.
The next morning we rose early to visit Amber Fort itself, climbing its weathered ramparts in that blessed hour before the tour buses arrive and transform sightseeing into competition for the perfect photograph. Standing beneath the original Ganesh Pol, with its floral frescoes still vivid after centuries and its mirrored arches creating infinite reflections of morning light, you begin to understand why architects still borrow from these forms, why they remain relevant in an age of glass and steel. The impossible balance between delicacy and power, between decoration and fortification, speaks to something fundamental about Rajput aesthetics, where beauty was never separate from strength but rather its most sophisticated expression. Inside, the Sheesh Mahal, that legendary Hall of Mirrors, was already filling with tourists craning their necks and angling their phones to capture something of its sparkle, though no photograph could ever convey the way those tiny mirrors transform even the smallest flame into a constellation.
Later that evening, back at Anantara Jewel Bagh, we discovered the hotel’s own interpretation of the Sheesh Mahal, reimagined as a bar where 3.5 lakh pieces of glass create their own universe of reflection. There was no one else inside at that hour, only the two of us and our images multiplying infinitely across the meticulously placed glass inlays, creating that peculiar vertigo that comes from seeing yourself reflected into infinity. One of the attendants, polishing glasses and readying our drink, smiled and mentioned that they often tell guests who miss the fort’s famous hall that they’ll find its essential sparkle recreated here. For once, imitation didn’t feel like compromise but rather like an intimate reinterpretation, the way a talented musician might play a classical raga with subtle personal variations.
Our final morning began in that darkness before dawn with a short drive through empty streets to Jhalana Leopard Reserve, Jaipur’s secret wilderness that lacks the international fame of Ranthambore or Jim Corbett but compensates with surprisingly frequent sightings. The open jeep rattled through thorn forest for two patient hours, disturbing peacocks that erupted from the undergrowth in explosions of iridescent blue and green, until finally a slender female leopard whose name, I later learned, was Flora, materialized from the shadows and galloped past our convoy of waiting vehicles, her spotted coat dissolving back into the dappled shade before most of us had even focused our cameras. I thought then of how this city, too, conceals its wildness behind carefully maintained facades of civility and commerce.
Back at the hotel that afternoon, the vast lawns were being transformed for what would clearly be an elaborate wedding celebration. Soon workers would climb bamboo ladders to string thousands of marigolds in precise patterns, decorators would engage in heated discussions about the optimal angles for spotlights, and somewhere a technician would be testing the sound system with the opening bars of a love song from a film that everyone’s parents had watched. The Rang Mahal ballroom, its walls hand-painted over two and a half painstaking years by craftsmen who still practice techniques passed down through generations, gleamed like an enormous jewel box waiting for its moment. It was evident that Jewel Bagh had discovered its calling in this city that has long been the undisputed capital of India’s elaborate wedding industry, offering itself as the newest and perhaps most photogenic stage for those multi-day celebrations that have become their own form of performance art. Watching it all take shape, I had the growing suspicion that my mother was already mentally reserving the place for some hypothetical future ceremony of mine, filing it away alongside other unspoken hopes.
As we packed our bags and prepared for departure, I joked in the feedback form they had provided that Anantara should consider adding a matchmaking service to their hospitality offerings, completing the circle of romance they had so carefully constructed. After all, I was leaving thoroughly convinced that this would be the perfect venue for my own wedding celebration, though I admitted with some embarrassment that I had yet to identify a bride.
But then Jaipur has always had that particular effect on visitors: it disarms cynicism with remarkable efficiency and replaces it with appetite for colour, for craft, for ornament, for the sheer audacity of joy made manifest in stone and cloth and precious metal. Its beauty may have been calculated down to the last inch by that young maharaja and his architects, following those ancient principles of proportion and harmony, but its effect on the contemporary visitor feels entirely accidental, as if the city’s charm emerges not from planning but from some deeper source. And as our car pulled away from the hotel’s sandstone arches and began the journey back toward the pink glow of the old city, that old refrain returned to mind: Padharo mhare desh. Welcome to my land, and perhaps, if you stay long enough and pay proper attention, to a small piece of your own longing made briefly, brilliantly real.
Really enjoyed this piece! The way Jaipur manages to hold both precision and chaos is fascinating. Spent a weekned there last year and that moment when you realize the old city's grid system is still operating beneath all the modern noise is pretty special, felt like discovering hidden order in what looked like pure randomness.
The whole trip looks incredible!